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“I kept an eye out for things being blown around in the distance but the tip of the tornado was probably a thousand feet off the ground and I didn’t see anything.”

Lee Sharman, 37, who was a few miles away in his home village of Broughton Astley, saw the tornado as well. He said: "There was no wind but there was this really long tornado coming out of the sky.

"It looked amazing. It was a huge spout but it was a long way off the ground."

Leicester Mercury weatherman Dave Mutton said: “It did go rather dark here in Cosby at lunchtime but if a tornado doesn’t touch the ground there wouldn’t necessarily be strong winds - although it might be a different story if you were in an aeroplane flying past it.

“In this sort of situation this can happen but it’s a matter of whether we see them during a rain storm.

“It’s something that happens in an unstable atmosphere.”

He said if the tornado had hit the ground he would expect winds of more than 50mph.

2 comments

I too saw this funnel cloud in Whetstone about 1:30pm as I was travelling to work. I saw it slowly form and then diminish twice. As I got near to work it had all but disappeared but the cloud had become a very angry looking shower cloud by this time!